Tell me tomorrow

I Wish I Hadn't

The wind snapped at the corners of her coat and Rue hugged it closer, she let out a shiver and felt the warm air tickle her skin. Her once white laces dragged along the cracked pavement, while underneath an abnormally loose shirt tried its best to battle the chills. Everything about her was being held together by a thread and Rue had stopped trying to hide it.

Around her, the grim greys of the city melted into the dusk as dark indigo clouds pushed away at the last signs of day.

It was a city of wide avenues and small pockets of quiet and green, high-rise buildings towered over it all and the sound of engines was customary. But of course, that was all at the heart of the city, here on the fringes it's like living underwater. The silence is deafening, everything is fuzzy -unclear, even if you squint you can't see far ahead, literally and figuratively.

Rue kept walking each step slower than the last, if anyone was around to see her, they would've screamed. The dark bags under her eyes made her pale skin look ghostlike and under the light of flickering lampposts, she looked dead.

The sound of her feet hitting the pavement ceased and Rue turned to face a crumbling block of flats. The dirty yellow walls might have been green once, but now the only sign of green was the small weeds sprouting out of the cracks in the concrete. The top of the building seemed to sway, and the paint chipped away in the breeze.

"Home sweet home"

Rue whispered, but her voice held a quiver as if she couldn't quite believe where she was standing.

She lifted her head to the sky chewing on her lip, tears welled in her eyes and she didn't wipe them away. Someone else might have looked to a star and made a wish but Rue didn't, instead, her eyes stared hopefully at the blinking red and white lights. Likely attached to the wings of some overpriced commercial plane, those lights were all Rue wanted. It had been a mistake to chase the "city life" and all Rue wanted was to be on that plane flying to someone warm who smelt like sunshine and fresh laundry.

Still facing up Rue let out gut-wrenching sobs, while the tears pooled at her neck, the sound of soft pattering feet got her attention and from the corner of her eye she made out an alleyway woven between the rows of rickety buildings.

She made her way over to it, though it would be more accurate to say she shuffled her way over. The alley should've been pitch black, yet the dim flickering lamppost mocked the dark. Rue lifted an arm hesitantly, it was narrow, so narrow that if she stretched her arms' she could have touched the buildings on both sides.

Taking a step inside, her eyes travelled around every bend and crack in the walls looking for what had made the noise.

And then she saw it.

The mosaic of light caught her attention first, reflecting of a sleek black exterior. The trigger glinted in the dark taunting her. It was flawless -and loaded.

She reached out an unkempt hand, with nails far too long she wrapped her skinny fingers around the hilt of the gun hesitantly. The glossy metal was cold against her skin and eagerness danced in her core, while her fingers twitched in anticipation. She might have been in a dirty forgotten alleyway, but her mind was somewhere else entirely.

Her eyes focused so intently that she couldn't see anything except what was in her hands, the world around her had never been so insignificant.

She didn't move an inch, for who knows how long, perfectly content where she was.

"Wha-hat chu doin over *hic* there love"

Ripped from her trance, a sharp gasp left her lips and her stomach fell, she spun around instantly and saw the shadowy figure of a man at the entrance of the alley.

She pulled the trigger.

The noise was shrill at first before a deafening boom followed, it took her a moment to realise it had come from her, more specifically the pistol in her hands.

She looked down shakily and when she saw the sliver of smoke circling the barrel, she felt faint, the gun clattered onto the floor and her hands hung in the air.

The sound of a thud had bile rising to her throat, her eyes found their way forward and she mumbled through her hands.

A man no older than 25 lay on the floor, a pool of blood forming around his head. His clothes were no better than hers just as old and used. He was fairly short, and his face had been sweet and welcoming.

She fell to the floor, pulling at her hair; every sense was dialled to a hundred and she couldn't process anything. In that split moment, fear had protected her from reality, and she had pulled the trigger but now as his blood slowly trickled towards her, she didn't know what to do.

Her voice started to shake, and she forced a laugh, but her voice was so hoarse it sounded like a bark. "I should call...for help, they'll know what to do"

But even as the words left her lips, she knew they were empty lies, he was dead before he hit the floor.

Rue's face was stoic, she willed herself to move, to stand up, but her legs no longer listened to her. She balled her hands into fists and brought them down on her legs relentlessly, "get up, get up, get up". Fresh tears streamed down her face, and ever so slowly her legs began to move. With shaking knees' she managed to pull herself up leaning against the walls of the alley.

Her mind began racing again and she wanted to scream but she was too afraid to speak.

He should not have happened, he needed to disappear.

And then from the end of the alley, she heard it, the short powerful crashes that came and went at that same rhythmic pace, undisturbed by the city beside it.

Her mind wandered, and she could see the waves gently crawling to shore, before they pulled everything down into their deep abyss, never to be seen again.

She looked up again at the sky, the flashing lights were long gone. When she looked down at him, Rue had a new face of determination, the tears dried away. She looked down through the alley, her eyes travelling all the way to the docks.